The distinction between mental health and disease was not advanced among the ancients, but they did recognize varieties of insanity such as delirium, melancholy and mania. Many physicians recommended music in the treatment of mental disease, and Quarin spoke of a single case of epilepsy cured by music. With the exception of severe epilepsy, many patients who suffer from the symptoms which bear this name have only occasional attacks and these disappear spontaneously, making the music simply another coincidence. * * * * * Celsus, who was a great medical authority not only in his own time but in subsequent centuries wrote of the mentally ill, “We must quiet their demoniacal laughter ... and sooth their sadness by harmony, the sound of cymbals and other noisy instruments”[16]. Areteus, another great physician of ancient Rome, prescribed music for “corybantism, a disease of the imagination”[24]. The great Dutch physician, Boerhaave[11], said, “I do not know if all that one tells us of the charms and enchantments could not be attributed to the effects of music, in which the ancient physicians were well versed.” References continued to appear concerning the magical relationship between music and healing. Robert Grosseteste (1175-1253 A.D.) said that disease and even wounds and deafness could be cured by music based upon a knowledge of astrology and mathematics[75]. * * * * * During the early part of the Christian Era, most of the arts were sustained by the Church, and as a result the finest works in painting and music were available to the average man only within places of worship. Not until the Renaissance did serious music take on a secular character. Music until then was largely identified with religion, and as such was considered to have an influence on the soul. Bacon advanced as a rule of health that people “recreate their spirits every day with a piece of good music.”[13] He went a step further in his _Sylva Sylvarum_. “Seeing then the mind is so powerful an agent in particular disease, I see no reason why the efficacy of music should not be tried in many disorders which arise in the animal constitution; for music composes the irregular motion of the animal spirits and more especially allays the inordinate passion of grief and sorrow.”[7] The restful and joyful qualities of music were praised by Shakespeare: “But sweet music can minister to minds diseased Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow Raze out the written troubles of the brain And with its sweet oblivious antidote Cleanses the full bosom of all perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart.” Henry Beacham wrote in his “_The Compleat Gentleman_” in 1634 that